2010 R&D 100 Award Submissions

Discoveries, developments, advancements and inventions pouring from Los Alamos make America—and the world—a better and safer place and bolster national security.

DAAFox: Environmentally Friendly Secondary Explosive

We have developed a new synthesis method to manufacture a version of diaminoazoxyfurazan (DAAF), which we call DAAFox. DAAFox possesses an ideal combination of physical characteristics that makes it powerful (requires less explosive to achieve the same yield as other explosives), insensitive (resists accidental ignition, which makes it a “safe” explosive), “green” (the synthesis method is environmentally friendly), and easy to produce and scalable (one-step process that produces a batch in only four hours). This revolutionary combination of characteristics makes DAAFox an ideal secondary explosive, which can be used as an explosive booster for applications that require both insensitivity and enhanced performance.

Applications

Serves as an explosive booster, which acts as a bridge between a low-energy explosive and a low-sensitivity but typically high-energy explosive.

Serves as a main-charge explosive for Department of Energy applications.

Possible replacement for PBXN-7, a common booster used in fuzes by the Department of Defense in their military ordnance.

Works in high-temperature and -pressure environments for oil and natural gas drilling, mining, quarrying and construction applications

Benefits

Uses environmentally friendly materials, such as water, sodium bicarbonate, and OXONE, a nontoxic bleaching agent used to sanitize swimming pools (The manufacturing process yields only salty water as a waste product.)

Yields a safe and high-performing material that compares favorably with existing benchmarks for safe and high-performance explosives

Uses an easy, one-step process to produce an explosives batch in only four hours

Scales easily to large quantities without negatively impacting the product’s beneficial characteristics

MOXIE: Movies of Extreme Images

Imagine taking a 1,000-frame movie of a sparkplug firing, just once. With MOXIE, a photographer wouldn’t even break a sweat, as the camera can take more than 4,000 frames at 20 million frames per second. Because each pixel has its own detector, amplifier, analog-to-digital convertor and memory—with thousands of channels operating in parallel—MOXIE can achieve high frame rates, a large number of frames and unprecedented sensitivity required to enable diverse imaging experiments that even the most sophisticated cameras available today cannot accomplish. Furthermore, the unique, in-line, self-shielded design allows images of visible light, x rays, gamma rays, protons and neutron sources to be recorded with high efficiency.

Superconducting wire is to electric power transmission what fiber-optics has been to communications. But superconducting wire is still too costly to manufacture. Solution Deposition Planarization (SDP) will not only reduce production costs, it will also support much higher power densities. Amazingly, the SDP process is simpler, with virtually no toxic manufacturing wastes.

Imagine a revolutionary manufacturing technology that easily produces wires and cables that have greater conductivity than any other metal alloy, possess greater tensile strength than steel, operate at room- or even high-temperature environments, do not require cooling, and are not subject to current density, magnetic field quench or temperature quench. Known as Ultraconductus, this technology grows long-length metallic nanotubes while simultaneously cladding them within a metal matrix. As a result of this process, electrical current can jump between and along the ends of the metallic carbon nanotubes, thereby increasing the net electrical conductivity of the metal matrix by at least 100 times.

Applications

High-voltage cables used to transmit power to homes and businesses around the world, as well as motors and generators that power everything from simple electronics to complex manufacturing systems

Electrical wires used in everything from simple electronic devices such as cell phones and televisions to specialized applications in which the tensile strength of copper or aluminum conductors is insufficient

Magnetic storage devices that enable the use of alternative energy sources that require enhanced grid stability and use wind, solar or other intermittent energy sources

Benefits

Yields annual energy savings of approximately 150 billion kilowatt-hours of energy and an associated $15 billion in cost savings by replacing just one-half of existing high-voltage cables with Ultraconductus-produced cables

Possesses 10 times the tensile strength and up to 100 times the conductivity of copper

The Ultrasonic Algal Biofuel Harvester uses ultrasonic fields to harvest and extract from algae its lipids and proteins and recover the water, all in one integrated system. No other technology uses one single method to obtain all three valuable components of algae. Using acoustic-focusing technology and very minimal electrical energy, the Harvester dewaters and concentrates the algal cells, lyses the algal cells and separates the lipids and proteins. The lipids, or oils, in the algae can be refined into biofuel, the proteins used for animal feedstock, and the water recycled. The system uses no solvents and membranes, making it environmentally benign, and has no moving parts, resulting in very little needed maintenance. Because of its small size and energy efficiency, this technology can be used directly at algae growth ponds, reducing the need for high-cost transportation of algae in its medium to processing areas, thus further reducing biofuel production costs.

Applications

Provides a low-cost, environmentally benign and energy-efficient source of algal lipids for use in biofuels

Creates a valuable source of protein to feed production animals such as cattle, poultry and fish

Produces carbohydrates that can be used to produce ethanol or methane

Benefits

Makes algal biofuel more cost-competitive with current fuels, significantly increasing the availability and viability of biofuels in the near future

Eliminates the traditional use of hazardous solvents in extracting algal lipids and the associated risks to the environment and humans

Reduces the need to transport large quantities of algae to processing areas, lowering power consumption and transportation costs in the production of biofuel

Recycles water for immediate re-use

Allows for batch or continuous processing of algae

Cyber RADAR: Real-time Automatic Detection and Response

In recent years, the threat to computer systems from clever phishing scams, insider threats, destructive cyber worms and computer viruses has intensified, dramatically heightening the need for cyber security. The Cyber RADAR (Real-time Automatic Detection and Response) system detects and responds to threats automatically, in real time. The Cyber RADAR suite of four integrated components monitors a computer network, detects changes, decides which changes constitute threats and quarantines targeted computers. It completes all four steps in as little as 20 seconds, continuously protecting even a large network of 20,000 or more computers from costly attacks.

Applications

The Cyber RADAR computer-network security system can be used

in private company computer network systems

institutional computer network systems, such those as at national laboratories, or

hospitals and military computer network systems

Benefits

Replaces human intervention with automatic, real-time response

Stands guard and responds 24/7, eliminating dependence on standard work hours and work days

The High-Throughput Laboratory Network (HTLN) is a modular system that can receive, assession, and screen 10,000 influenza samples per year, generating their full genome. In “pandemic mode,” HTLN can monitor selective human genes at up to 50,000 samples per month in support of public health monitoring. Using the most advanced robotics and technologies available, HTLN easily runs 24/7 with fewer than eight operators. Originally designed to guide public health policies and vaccine development to counter emerging pandemics associated with any influenza virus carried in a primary avian host, HTLN can be quickly modified to sample, assession, and screen any infectious disease agent.

Applications

Monitors pathogens in the bio-pool along migratory animal paths

Expedites widespread collection and testing of influenza samples

Provides early data to guide public health policies and vaccine development before a pathogen becomes the next human pandemic

In pandemic mode, works to process high volumes of human samples quickly and accurately to support ever-changing public-health needs

Benefits

Provides the first entry in a global network system that processes samples, isolates the influenza, analyzes genomes, characterizes the phenotypes and stores relevant samples for reference

Tracks data from field-sample collection to the completed and assembled genome

Makes possible global surveillance as a result of HTLN’s automated sequencing and efficient influenza-handling techniques

Shortens dramatically the time needed to guide the selection of effective vaccines

Incorporates a modular design that is easily reconfigured to respond to emerging threats

PLFS (Parallel Log-Structured File System)

To prevent having to restart lengthy intensive computing as a result of a system failure, massively parallel computing systems rely on checkpointing, a process that saves a “snapshot” of an application’s current state. At present, concurrent and random-access checkpoint writes to a shared file require unnecessary disk-seeking and file-locking at the parallel storage system, a process that drastically reduces bandwidth. Our Parallel Log-structured File System software decouples concurrent access and reorganizes random logical writes into sequential physical writes, thus enabling applications to write in parallel at near-optimal storage bandwidth.

Applications

Improves write bandwidth for checkpoints of large parallel applications

Reduces N-N checkpointing times by reducing disk seeks through its use of sequential, log-structured writing to data storage

Distributes container subdirectories across multiple metadata servers

Benefits

Achieves near-optimal storage bandwidth

Reduces checkpoint time up to several orders of magnitude, even on the largest supercomputers

Frees resources that are expensive and limit the use of the machine

Works regardless of application I/O pattern for unmodified applications

Supporting biosurveillance via the web
A new online resource is providing a centralized portal for all news, information, resources and research related to biosurveillance at the laboratory. January 28, 2015